


Impulse and One-Upmanship

by HarpiaHarpyja



Series: Two Halves - Reylo Weekly Challenge Flash Fiction [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Banter, Canon Compliant, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Kylo Ren on the Run, Millennium Falcon - Freeform, POV Rey (Star Wars), Post-TLJ, Rey Has No Impulse Control, Reylo Weekly Challenge, Rogue Agent Kylo Ren, Wound Tending, daring rescues, reylo freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 01:12:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15697116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarpiaHarpyja/pseuds/HarpiaHarpyja
Summary: When Kylo makes a reckless attempt to do some good in the galaxy, Rey finds herself making an equally reckless attempt to rescue him from the fallout. Afterward, on theFalcon, they tend to some wounds and face some difficult standing questions.





	Impulse and One-Upmanship

**Author's Note:**

> Hitting up these weekly ficlet challenges again way out of order after many weeks of hiatus ... my contribution to the 'two-halves-of-reylo' Tumblr weekly challenge, Prompt #17, "Escape."

Blaster fire and explosions still rang in Rey’s ears, so maybe she was shouting too loudly. She couldn’t tell, and it didn’t seem to matter whether she was one way or the other. As they hurtled up the boarding ramp and into the mouth of the _Falcon_ , Ben immediately overtook her and veered straight for the gun well before she could even finish the command that he do so. He was running through a limp and leaking blood from somewhere she hadn’t had time to identify. They could figure that out later. His injuries didn’t appear to be life-threatening, and she already knew hers weren’t. Lingering here any longer, on the other hand, would be.

She knew perfectly well by now that the old freighter was deceptive. Despite appearances and the ever-present sense that it was on the verge of collapse, it was quick and maneuverable. Still, it was not made to be piloted alone. Rey had done so before, always in situations like the one she now found herself in, when no other recourse was available. It wasn’t easy. But she’d managed it getting here, and she would manage it until they were out of atmosphere and able to make the jump to hyperspace. Until then, guns were more crucial than convenience.

Impatiently, she waited for the systems to come to life, drumming a hand on the arm of the pilot’s seat and scanning the controls out of habit, watching each light blink awake ( _too slow, too damn slow, come on_ ), hearing circuits hum and fans whir, and finally enough was done. She punched the acceleration—too much, too fast. The ship jerked and shuddered, then rose from the rocky terrain she’d landed on an hour before and trundled into open air. They were gaining altitude, but slowly.

Rey willed herself to focus and work with what she had as she activated the shields. She was running a few mental calculations to center herself when the comm crackled and issued Ben’s voice. “ _You’re going to kill us both if you keep pushing it like that._ ”

She glared at the speaker, aware that Ben couldn’t see her do so. It made her feel better anyway, and she would take what she could get. Who was he to advise her about caution? 

“I know how to fly this thing. Shut up and shoot.”

“ _I will when there’s something to_ —”

He cut off and she caught the conspicuous shriek of TIE fighters, loud enough to be heard over the noise of her own ship. It was followed moments later by the sound of the _Falcon_ ’s laser cannons, then that of an explosion. Two explosions. Three . . . and four.

“Nice shooting,” she offered, feeling momentarily generous as she kept an eye on the horizon. The sound of her own voice grounded her, as it always had when she’d spent nearly all her time alone.

“ _I know_.” Rey rolled her eyes, another look sadly lost on him as he continued speaking. Maybe the one disadvantage of company: other people could talk back. “ _Return the favor and forget what I said. Push this junk heap or soon we’re going to be facing more than it can handle._ ”

“Stop telling me how to fly.” 

The _Falcon_ climbed higher, faster now and breaking through the clouds. They were probably safe from fire, but she wouldn’t feel at ease until they were out of the planet’s gravity and slicing through the long wash of hyperspace. Thirty more seconds, and that should do it. Would even that be too long? She gripped the hyperdrive lever, her other hand still resting on the steering yoke, both hands steady for all that her knuckles were white and her arms trembling with adrenaline.

Twenty seconds . . . they were out of the clouds, she could see stars and a distant ringed moon . . . ten . . . scratch that, this was enough. She hoped. It had to be. Rey pushed the lever and felt her vision swim as the starscape stretched before her and sent them off into the bright and blue.

***

Autopilot activated, Rey rounded the corner into the communal area and found Ben already there, hunched over an open trunk that housed the medical kit. It was also currently home to a random assortment of hardware and maintenance tools, many of them broken, which she had been wanting to find the time to sort and mend. But doing so had never been a top priority, and now she could see that the disorder was causing him some irritation. A wrench flew across the room and clattered over the top of the dejarik table. Rey eyed the situation, picked up the wrench (as Ben sent a pair of pliers off in a similar manner—though that, at least, just bounced off a seat), and approached him.

“Sit down,” she said. The adrenaline was still a rush, and she was grouchy, but she didn’t feel like arguing and hoped he had similar priorities. Sadly, she doubted it, given that she needed to dodge a nondescript pouch that went sailing by her head as she stood behind him. “What are you looking for?”

“Whatever you have in here that’ll stanch this,” he sniped, still digging around in the trunk. He paused briefly to indicate the spot on his right side where blood had been soaking through the fabric of his shirt. That explained the leaking, then. It hadn’t been that much when she intercepted him, though she had little frame of reference. She noticed now that there were little spots of blood on the floor near his foot. “Assuming it’s even possible to find something like that in this mess.”

“Go sit,” she repeated. “You’re just going to make it worse with all this huffing and thrashing,”

“I'm doing neither of those things.” 

He stopped his violent searching, though, and stood slowly. He was favoring his left leg. With some effort, he hobbled over to the bench near the dejarik table and eased himself down. He sat for a few seconds, thought better of it, and laid back. 

Rey looked over at him and then returned her attention to the issue of the medkit. “Take that off.”

“What?”

“Your shirt. I need to see how bad that is.”

“It isn’t as bad as it looks,” he muttered, pushing himself up and beginning to worm his way out of his shirt. She was glad he at least wasn’t arguing with that. “It's just bleeding a lot.”

Rey almost laughed. “Yeah, all over the inside of my ship. That’s not usually a good sign.” 

If he hadn't looked at his injury yet, which she knew he hadn’t, she doubted he could adequately evaluate its severity. Though she could admit he probably had a point; if it was truly terrible, he wouldn't be standing or talking. Or sitting up. Or being so snarky—she assumed. She was no medical professional, but she’d had plenty of practice patching herself up over years of solitary life, and to her, he looked all right. Bruised, scratched, a little paler than usual, but all right.

The medkit was indeed proving a pain in the ass to navigate. Chewie helped with maintenance, and he apparently had similar habits to Han. And Rey herself wasn’t particularly tidy. She was regretting that now. Over her shoulder, she called, “What did you do to your leg?”

“Turned an ankle.” He grunted a little when the fabric of the shirt stuck to the bloody mess under his arm, and Rey could actually hear the sound of it peeling away from his skin. “You going to tell me to take my pants off so you can check that minor inconvenience too?”

“Dream on.” 

She didn't have time for nonsense. She needed to get back up front and check their progress. Ah, _finally_. She found an unopened package of bacta patches, a pair of long-nosed tweezers, and an irrigation bulb and disinfectant. It would do in a pinch, which they were. Pleased with herself, Rey rose and joined Ben on the bench. His body was as battered as his face. He had his arm lifted and was prodding at the wound with a finger, face impassively curious.

She held out a hand and waited. “Let me see.” 

He held her gaze for a moment, then shifted to give her a better look. The wound was raw and messy, located on his side not far from his pectoral. Though it was large enough to bleed a lot, it did not appear to be unmanageable with what she had at her disposal, for the time being. Good. When she leaned in and put a hand to his elbow to nudge his arm higher, she noticed an odd glint from the far side of the cut. Not good.

“Huh.” She frowned and reached for the tweezers. “You’ve got some metal bit or something lodged in there. Lie down on your side. Keep your arm up out of the way. I’ll try to pull it out. It doesn’t look too big.”

Ben did as she requested, moving to his left side. He curled his right arm up and tucked it under his head to give her as good a vantage point as possible. It actually helped quite a bit, because the motion pulled the skin around the wound nice and taut. The way he was propped, he couldn’t really watch her work, either, which Rey preferred. She didn’t like feeling scrutinized, particularly when she was doing something that required her full attention.

“What did this come from, anyway?” she asked, trying to keep him distracted, though he seemed to be handling that on his own. The way he was lying may have kept her from his line of sight, but it afforded him an opportunity to look around the room. It wasn’t very interesting, in her opinion. Even so, she noticed the way his eyes roamed the walls and ceiling, pausing here and there, his brow twitching occasionally. 

“The ship I wrecked. Half of it ended up blown out. That’s probably a chunk of cockpit or control console.”

She was expecting him to be tensed and to have to tell him to relax. He wasn’t much at all. Surely, he’d gone through situations like this enough times for him to be practiced at it. In afterthought, she wondered if her own presence had something to do with it as well. That wasn’t a thought she wanted to dwell on—it was self-indulgent. Stuff like that made it difficult to concentrate. 

She used the irrigation bulb to douse the wound in disinfectant. Perhaps she should have done that first, but she’d been too busy sating her curiosity about what he’d been doing to get in this state and require rescuing. The liquid cleared much of the dried blood away and gave her a better view of the puncture site. Feeling more confident, she rinsed her hands and the tweezers in the sterile fluid, then took a breath. “Right. Keep still, I’m pulling it out now.” 

Rey glanced at his face to verify he’d heard her, then gripped the exposed edge of the shard with the tweezers, made sure she had it at a good angle, and pulled carefully straight up. It came free easily and cleanly, as far as she could tell, with little to announce its removal beyond a sharp intake of breath from Ben. The whole brief process reminded her of stripping half-exposed chips and wiring from the inside of the wrecks she used to loot. She preferred this—a little blood was better than the risk of electrocution or burns.

Her assumption of the shard’s size hadn’t been wrong. It was maybe two inches long and about an inch wide, hammered thin and melted a little, but surprisingly uniform in shape. The dull silver sheen of it was currently slicked over with Ben’s blood. He started to make as if he was going to sit up, but she pressed a hand to his shoulder.

“Hang on, I still need to cover it. Check this out.” She held the tweezers, still clutching the metal piece, toward him. “Souvenir?”

He gave a huff of reluctant laughter, then winced slightly. “I’ll pass.”

“Hm. Sorry about your ship, anyway.” She set the shard and tweezers down on the dejarik board and returned her attention to the wound. The bleeding had slowed considerably now that Ben wasn’t moving around and foreign objects had been removed. The edges were relatively clean, too; not as ragged as she’d first thought before cleaning it. She grabbed the bulb and soaked the area in disinfectant again, patted it dry with a clean cloth, and cast about for the bacta patch.

“It wasn’t mine,” Ben said. He saw her searching and held the wrapped patch up. She hadn’t noticed, but he’d been fiddling with it as she worked. “I stole it.”

“Impressive. Been there.” She was still more focused on applying the patch, making sure the edges fused cleanly to his skin, but when that was done she offered him a small smile. “What happened to yours?”

“I’m trying not to think about it too much.”

"Sounds like a story.” Rey was throwing the medkit back together—once again, she'd have to consider tidying it up another day. “I've got to go make sure we're still on course, but get dressed and meet me up there. If you want. Co-pilot seat’s still open.”

He nodded mutely, and Rey returned the the cockpit. She sank down into the pilot’s chair and shut off the autopilot, confirmed that the route was sound, and finally let herself relax. Though the concept of relaxation was relative right now. What was she going to do with Ben? The decision to come after him with no backup—to _rescue_ him—had been the very definition of poor impulse control. She’d done something like this once before, hadn’t she, years ago? And how had that ended? 

_Not well. Kriff._

Watching the stars streak past lost its distractive charm quickly. She was about to click the comm back on, call to the lounge and confirm that Ben was still there, when he did her one better—he limped into the cockpit and sat heavily in the seat she’d offered him almost fifteen minutes before.

“You didn’t need to come,” he said, as if they’d been in the middle of a conversation already. 

“I know that. A bit like how you didn’t need to try taking out a First Order manufacturing base _on your own._ ” Now that they were out of direct danger and she had the benefit of thinking about it, the audacity of it was unbelievable, even for him. “What an incredibly stupid thing to do.”

“Yeah, it was.” He was amused—pleased with himself and what he’d done. That had not been the reaction she was going for. “So was flying in after me without a co-pilot.” 

He still hadn’t asked how she’d known he needed aid. The answer was understood and unsaid, like the bond that had brought her to his side. Like most things between them.

“I’ve done it before.” They were both alive, so she didn’t see why it mattered how stupid either of their actions had been. Neither of them had any room to criticize half-cocked plans. “Are we going to sit here trying to one-up the other’s stupidity in this?”

“We could.” He shifted in the seat, stretched his injured leg out as far as he could. “Or I could say that I’m happy you did come.”

“So am I.” 

She dared to look at him, but he wasn’t paying her any mind. Instead his eyes were scanning the control console, settling on each panel or switch or button or lever, like he was accounting for them all. He was remembering. She felt it, and for an instant she was too. His gaze darted to fleetingly touch a spot above the viewport, empty, then down and back to focus on the numbing, repetitive view of space bleeding past. He looked simultaneously mystified and perfectly at ease.

What she said next felt risky, but it could make nothing worse. What was one more impulsive action after all that? And he looked so . . . _right_ , sitting there. “But will this be the time you don't make me leave you behind afterward?”

Ben was quiet and thoughtful and no longer treating with such flippancy the fact of where they were and what they were doing. The ship droned on around them, vibrating almost imperceptibly as it raced onward. 

“Stay the course and find out."


End file.
